You can still retcon a bit, you know. I see nothing wrong with it as long as 1.you only change relatively minor things and 2.it deserves to be altered.

Are there planetary shields? Because I think that would really help out justifying ground troops. Actually, I think we already established them when Alkara blew up; they're the reason Khuris wasn't entirely incinerated.

Considering that was totally out of character and really made no sense, I had to come up with something, hence the pathogen thing.

Talking about pathogens, what's your opinion on the Infection?

I was thinking of asking Kitkat whether it'd be okay for him if I borrowed an alternate universe version of the Talsenreave. Make it one of those "we can only keep this millimeter-wide portal open for so long, so you better listen up" scenarios.

If he says yes, I have a story that'd neatly tie up every loose end we have right now, including the Infection, without resorting to drastically retconning entire races. It'd basically come down to a sudden massive crackdown on the people responsible for the Nameless Incident before they've gotten their plans set. The closest sci-fi equivalent to this that I could think of is Shepherd's whole MO in Mass Effect 2, so if you want to, I could make the final infiltration part into an RP.

If anyone has a question about this, you're free to inquire more about it, politely.

"Agh, let the sweeper units find that little rachet in the works. For now we have an invasion to cripple." Ryo'lis said, peering out at the mass collection of ships that had collected at his command; he had given order for every Photos ship in the galaxy to gather at this location, and the armada numbered in the millions.

A trained soldier in a tactically realistic setting would laugh at a mech instead of being afraid.

The only exception would be in situations where the soldier knows that the enemy is fully aware that mechs are inefficient and is just using them to drive home the point that the soldier is so far beneath them that he's simply using a mech just for the heck of it.

Are there planetary shields? Because I think that would really help out justifying ground troops. Actually, I think we already established them when Alkara blew up; they're the reason Khuris wasn't entirely incinerated.

There's still the problem of size, though.

Planets are big and protecting every inch of land is mind-blowingly expensive. And even if we go by the cheap route of protecting the he cities alone, it will still not do a colony any good if the enemy could just do this to the unshielded parts, thereby rendering the place practically inhospitable to anyone without a hazmat suit, which I'd like to aptly call the Khuris Effect.

Building space cities is safer? I somewhat doubt that. Someone could argue for hours on ends in favor of either side, actually. You make it sound like one has to cover their couch, chandelier and bookcase in tinfoil when all you need to do is cover the roof with it. With Dyson Ring satellites to collect solar power, the energy should be no problem. Put up a big spherical electromagnetic field, and you're set.

I should note that gravity is definitely a worse choice than electromagnetism when it comes to shields and such. After all, gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental forces. You should probably only use it when the enemy uses gravity-based weaponry, which is rare outside tractor beams. Just sayin'.

Space cities can be evacuated to deep space or other systems. On top of this, they can also travel in complex and difficult to predict patterns if someone declares war on them. The smaller ones could also blend more easily if they stick to asteroids, especially when said asteroid is part of a large asteroid field. As a last resort, they can also fight back more easily due to not living on the bottom of a gravity well.

I concede that if a prolonged siege was to occur, the planet-based one would be better off. However, that would be missing the point that space cities are meant for running and hiding instead of tanking attacks.

Also, unless a race likes to build their planet-based cities the same way Stargate's Alterans did with the Atlantis, they're sitting ducks.

You make it sound like one has to cover their couch, chandelier and bookcase in tinfoil when all you need to do is cover the roof with it.

What I'm trying to say is that planet-based cities will lose most of their merits (breathable atmosphere, large ecosystem, etc.) over space-based colonies if the rest of the planet's surface is transformed into something akin to the surface of Venus, a circumstance which can only be averted if you have either a planet-sized shield or a lot of active defenses, both of which are prohibitively expensive for most non-core colonies.

I should note that gravity is definitely a worse choice than electromagnetism when it comes to shields and such. After all, gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental forces. You should probably only use it when the enemy uses gravity-based weaponry, which is rare outside tractor beams. Just sayin'.

It was not a statement of efficiency, but an example of "faction bonuses."

For example: South Korea is the largest ship builder in the world. I would naturally expect that when it comes to building most types of navy ships, they can build them more efficiently compared to a country like Switzerland.

Yeah, I suppose the economies wouldn't be terribly suited for that. I'll bet that a significant portion of species have the same planet-defending tactics that the humans of Mass Effect used at Shanxi: Keep a small guard at the colony, and have a much larger and more powerful reserve force waiting only a few hours away nearer to the center of the territories.

Sounds to me like those Retconium warheads are in the wrong hands. I may need to persuade you to dismantle some of it, because destroying the GPA would completely derail the last decade or so of the galactic timeline and render all that precious Perrachi history moot. Orealyianis and Atomna I can understand, but you don't touch the GPA, man. It's not yours anymore; it belongs to everyone, and like I said was crucial to the last few years of galactic development. It's like if Britain wanted to dismantle the UN in 1959.

You know what? I might have to break out a pretty dang big Retconium (goshdarnit Yuu I love that word) bomb here. I've done the math... Technically, the PSR should be 1,000 light years in diameter, which seems way too big for a species that's only been around so long. Mark Rosenfelder's Incatena books have humanity within a mere 50 ly sphere and meeting at least 8 other sapient alien species. By that math, Perrachi space should contain over two thousand sapient races. Keep in mind that the Incatena may be comic, but it's also hard sci-fi!

So here's my proposal: Abandon the concept of a galaxy-spanning area in favor of focusing on a relatively much smaller area. If this sounds a bit repellent to you, consider this: As I said we used to not care about the maps too much, and back in the days of the OG this is exactly what they did! Seriously, go check out the galaxy map threads: It was all in one quadrant with dozens of spacefaring species and who knows how many more!

I think my idea is pretty good, although we've got to remember that a lot of species would be more technologically primitive (but nonetheless sapient). And I've got only 10 Perrachi nations in 10 star systems across a thousand light years while the Incatena has around 50 human nations across 50 light years! What a waste of space! By focusing on a specific area we can have the galaxy be larger than 9,000 ly (but preferably not quite as huge as the Milky Way). The only downside I can possibly see here is that "on the other side of the galaxy" sounds romantic. But then what about "halfway across the Classical Expanse" or "at the heart of the Arrowhead Nexus"? Much more descriptive than the generic "galaxy"!

So what do you think? Are you willing to adopt a good deal of plausibility along with a sense of wonder at the galaxy's unexplored vastness not to mention nice creative names for nebulae, etc. in exchange for...basically nothing? How does that deal sound, eh?

No.Rather than make a huuuge retcon that EVERYONE has to go back and fix a metric crapton of stuff, why don't you just retcon the Perrachi?Also, 8 other sapient alien species? Within 50 lightyears?Come now. Let's not just blow Drake's Equation entirely to the wind here.If memory serves, not even ME's that bad.You said it's hard-science, but also consider: It's still a comic.

Drake's Theory is bull****. That said, I like UFO's idea. 'The Classical Expanse' actually sounds like some awesome ****. In an area of 1000 LY with a hundred different species sounds a lot more fun than a whole galaxy with the same amount.

If I recall correctly, we already have something to that primarily in the form of the Right Lower Quadrant. The only races that we know of in there are Darth Grievi's races, and even then they're pretty enigmatic, all things considered.

Additionally, here's a map.

I purposefully over-exaggerated the occupied territories, but even then it's clear that over four-fifths of the galaxy is no-man's land.

The only real civilized clusters of space that we know of are the Local Sector, the Goonal-Perrachi-Bino-Ni'Calls Tetralogy, the Photos core worlds, and the Old Galaxy, the latter still accounts for over 90% of civilized space. All in all, these places could all fit in the outer rim of a single quadrant, with a lot of space to spare. It's not that we're numerous, we're just spread out, which is in a way far creepier compared to when we're all huddled together. Especially once it sinks in that threats could attack us from any direction, and that our comparatively more vulnerable supply lines are gonna be hard to protect.

To compare it to the real world, the OG was a pair of two large islands in an ocean full of sea monsters. The RG is an archipelago of significantly smaller islands located in that same ocean.

OR for a more historical comparison, the OG was Renaissance Continental Europe and RG is the Wild Wild West.

Speaking of primitives, aside from the vast amount of undiscovered species, most of the inner rim is also basically lawless territory, so there goes a visible chunk of the OG as well.

I think the problem is more about our brains tricking us subconsciously into thinking that all of those claimed territories are already explored. If we had more accurate maps showing just how far apart inhabited are, the problem would be lessened.

In any case, I think Grox could make it so that the Photos use a mix of "spray and pray" and "colony pack" when it comes to colonization strategy. Basically, each "colony pack" consists of a small city, some defenses, and a factory that can make more "colony packs" along the way (The latter would rely on very extensive mass-cloning, though). All packs are then sent pretty much in all directions, some ending up as far as the USSS side of the galaxy. After a while, a lot of these packs would settle down and begin pumping out packs en-masse, just like Photise.

If that could be done, it's only a matter of explaining that while Photos may be comparatively the same, numbers wise, it has far larger claimed territory due to how extremely diluted they are.

Density-wise, they could be explained as the equivalent of Space-Siberia.

Really, the only thing preventing the above is a certain canon build rate in the creature thread (almost half a century or so for the "mere" 40 floor tall and 20 floor deep High Command alone, IIRC), and the people's view on mass-cloning. The former, if it's any indication of the Photos' build rate for ships, simply wouldn't be enough to create enough colony packs in the needed span of time. The latter, I'm unsure of.

Drake's Theory is bull****. That said, I like UFO's idea. 'The Classical Expanse' actually sounds like some awesome ****. In an area of 1000 LY with a hundred different species sounds a lot more fun than a whole galaxy with the same amount.

Thanks, Badger and Yuu! The site was inexplicably down for a few hours for me, so this reply is a little late:It's comic as in funny, not graphic novels. And Mass Effect clearly stated that everybody in total had explored less than 1% of all the stars in the galaxy. The same exact statistic is said in the Incatena (because it has no FTL so humans explored steadily), and I'm pretty sure ME has more than 8 species.

The Drake Equation? Lemme clarify something for you (in a not-rude voice, because obviously isn't auditory): That equation not only doesn't take a lot of important factors into account, but is entirely hypothetical. It has produced no solid numbers because we don't have the solid numbers it asks for. You could get anywhere from one to a million species from that useless thing, which does nothing but take in vapor and churn out vapor. Thus, I really don't understand why you're relying on it when it has no answer and is unfit for making the answer anyway. My figures are admittedly guesses, but I'm just going by what rough statistics we have on extrasolar planets and a bit of Rule of Cool here and there.

So I'm just trying to make this more plausible, not to mention open up a vast frontier for exploration. Who doesn't want to go explore an entire galaxy? Your other option is to switch to a series of "gates", Mass Relay-type things that let you go across the galaxy easily but bypass untold billions of star systems. Can't we just keep it simple?

Finally, everyone making painstaking retcons is the exact opposite of what I want. The point here is to start anew, right? Fresh pioneering spirit? We just switch to a galactic slice and save ourselves the trouble of filling in that unbelievably massive empty space with thousands of unique planets, instead opting for mere hundreds at most.Yuu has some really good points, but overall I prefer the idea of the RG areas being close to but only recently in contact with the OG. 1000x1000 ly sounds good to me. GG, I totally understand your points, but overall it just seems you misunderstood and I didn't clarify well enough.

Ok, granted, I was off. I've only learned slight amounts of Drake's Equation. That and I've never actually played ME just read up on the back story and the like.I didn't like the concept and I wanted to at least -try- to back up what I was saying. Evidently that failed miserably >.<Also, comic as in funny. Got it. I thought you meant the graphic novel comic.